Pakistan’s military entrenches power

Last month, Pakistan’s National Assembly adopted the 27^th constitutional amendment and passed several legal amendments to laws radically affecting the judiciary and the governance of the three branches of the Pakistan armed forces. The legal and political repercussions of these changes are sweeping and highly controversial.

The most far-reaching judicial change brought about with the constitutional amendment is the downgrading of the Supreme Court of Pakistan to an apex court for civil and criminal appeals only and replaced by a new all-powerful Federal Constitutional Court (FCC). The FCC is now the supreme court of the land whose decisions are binding on all courts. The judges on the FCC are selected by the president, upon the advice of the prime minister and the executive-dominated Judicial Commission. The far-reaching changes to the selection of FCC and other judges, which was instituted with the 26^th Constitutional Amendment passed in October 2024, blurs the boundaries between the executive and the judiciary. As a lawyer succinctly put it: “If the 26^th amendment was the death of the independence of the judiciary, the 27^th amendment is its funeral.”

The governance of Pakistan’s armed forces is the second sphere where fundamental changes have been brought about with the 27^th Amendment. Prior to the latest constitutional changes, the Army, Navy and Air Force were under the overall nominal operational control of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee but effectively commanded by the Chief of Army Staff. With the amendment, the position of chairman of the joint chiefs is abolished and the position of Chief of the Defence Forces (CDF) is created. The CDF not only has control over all three services but also continues to hold the Chief of Army Staff appointment. The CDF also has the power to recommend the selection of the Vice Chief of the Army Staff. His tenure is for five years, with the possibility of an additional five-year extension. The age limit of 64 for the CDF and the other three service chiefs has been removed. The CDF also has oversight of the National Strategic Command which controls the deployment of the country’s nuclear arsenal and its missile force. Importantly, the CDF and service chiefs have life-long immunity from legal prosecution.

These comprehensive changes to the military hierarchy, without any doubt, makes the current CDF, Field Marshal Asim Munir, the most powerful man in Pakistan, a country of 240 million people. And unless something happens to him, he will be in that post until 2030 and quite possibly beyond. These changes also seriously skew the “hybrid rule”—as they call the co-habitation of civilian and military power in Pakistan, in favour of the men in uniform.

Despite his amassing all this power, the field marshal has been unable to silence completely imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan. From his jail cell where he has been languishing for well over two years on a number of charges, including misuse of his office and corruption, Imran Khan has been able to keep his political base mobilised, albeit at a lower tempo given the severe clampdown on his political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Earlier this week, the Army spokesperson, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, accused the former prime minister of being “mentally ill” and a “national security concern” who has been in “deep collusion with external actors”. Chaudhry’s outburst was in reaction to Imran Khan’s earlier statement calling Field Marshal Munir “mentally unstable” and causing the “complete collapse of the Constitution and rule of law in Pakistan”.

However, the political equation may well soon turn against Imran Khan now that the executive-controlled FCC has been established. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has been keen to once and for all officially ban the PTI but hasn’t done so because the Supreme Court probably would have declared the ban constitutionally illegal. But all this has now changed. Notwithstanding the violent popular backlash that it would probably cause, a ban of the PTI by the FCC is a distinct possibility. However, this would not permanently resolve the Imran Khan ‘problem’ for the generals. While Field Marshal Munir may be popular following Pakistan’s success against India in the short military clash in May this year, he also knows that he needs to tread very carefully given the civilian government’s lack of political legitimacy following the highly flawed national elections in February 2024.  

But Imran Khan is not Munir’s only headache. Terrorist attacks continue to plague the country, with the Afghanistan-based Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claiming most attacks. Last month suicide bombers caused many deaths at the headquarters of Pakistan's civilian paramilitary force in Peshawar in the northwest of the country along the border with Afghanistan. Two weeks earlier a TTP-linked suicide bomber detonated himself outside a district court in Islamabad, killing 12 people. TTP attacks in Pakistan have increased exponentially since the Taliban—historically, tribally and operationally-linked to the TTP—returned to power in Kabul in August 2021. It is now Pakistan’s single biggest security threat, and its eradication is nowhere in sight.

Pakistan has repeatedly demanded for the last four years that the Taliban expel the TTP from its territory and take action to stop the TTP from using its safe havens in Afghanistan to launch attacks into Pakistan. Not surprisingly, and despite many high-level bilateral meetings, these demands have been ignored. This has led recently to some of the most violent border clashes between the two countries’ armies. And while a Qatar and Turkey mediated ceasefire has led to an easing of tension, border clashes have not stopped. How these deep differences will be resolved is anyone’s guess. Bilateral relations between the two countries have been difficult ever since Partition in 1947, and the TTP issue adds another layer of complexity to those differences.

So, while Field Marshal Munir and his generals may be all powerful—at least on paper, they have not been able to completely subdue Imran Khan and his millions of followers, and they are not even close to defeating the TTP. Achieving domestic peace and political stability may well elude Pakistan under Munir’s watch, and quite possibly long after he will have left the political scene.

Dr Claude Rakisits is a Canberra-based geo-strategic analyst who has been following South Asian issues for over 40 years. He’s also the President of the ACT Branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA).